Food and Storytelling: a Reflection
I’ve said it once, I’ve said it probably more than once, and I’ll say it again: storytelling is more than words. We tell stories in pictures, in movements of our bodies, and in the way we dress. Architecture tells as much story of the history of a place as the written stories and diaries. For our personal narratives, we tell them our ways with the things we have around us. When we invite others around us, we tell them our stories through the way we decorate our homes, through the way we dress ourselves, and the food we present.
This year, I had the absolute joy to combine some of the elements of myself into the Christmas I spend with my husband’s family. For the last few years, I’ve learned a lot about his family through partaking in these rituals with his family. I learn about his history through the food we eat, and also see some of the changes that are occurring in their history. Their Christmas dinner looks a lot like the traditional English Christmas dinner, for example, with pigs and blankets, sprouts, and a roast. But my husband grew up vegetarian, so its this Christmas dinner is a vegetarian version. The roast is a nut roast, the pigs and blankets are Quorn. When I first started going, the Christmas breakfast consisted of pain au chocolate and cereal. But since my sister-in-law’s partner started coming, they’ve started including toast and smoked salmon, to incorporate his story.
I’ve witnessed the changes in his family’s storytelling. And now, I get to include aspects of my own story into theirs. As new members join the family, the family’s story is bound to change and adapt, incorporating new identities and stories into their primary fold.
From an outside narrative scholar perspective, I have to admit it’s fascinating to watch. Each piece of food served on the plate as a story behind it, whether it’s present because of someone else’s story, or the way it was served is because of the personality of one of the members. My brother-in-law gets his sprouts served a different way because he’s picky. We have chocolate cakes as well as Christmas cake because some members don’t like Christmas cake. But my mother-in-law is so connected to Christmas cake that it’s served every year anyway.
But families don’t just gather members, they also lose members. They used to gather with the grandparents, for example, on either Boxing Day or the 27th. But this year, they didn’t the last two years. Any new members joining now will not know the original traditions when the grandparents were present.
When I shared my food with my in-laws, I did more than simply help take care of one of the meals for them. I gave them a part of my story. And the food that makes up part of my story is not only a history of myself, but also my siblings and their partners and my grandparents. It’s the make up of the various members of the family that join our fold, and the remnants of those we’ve lost. It’s also captured in a moment in time - a time when I was still a part of that family, joining every year. Since not being able to come back, I haven’t been as much a part of the alterations to the family and its tradition. So the story of my life before my husband is just that - a moment in time that is suspended and unable to move forward. It becomes a fragment, only a chapter rather than a full story. It becomes a fuller story when it becomes a chapter within the story of other people’s fragments.
I hope this year, when you ate your dinners - whether they be big traditional Christmas dinners with loads of family members, or smaller ones with just you and the one or two people you care most about in life, or whether you just had a normal dinner because you don’t celebrate - you take a moment to consider what stories your dinner is telling, what each side dish says, and what each piece of food says about you and your own history.